


Bow, Arrow, Heart.

by Zinnith



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 14:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4440206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zinnith/pseuds/Zinnith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint Barton, after Sokovia, after everything, before the rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bow, Arrow, Heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know. This movie tag is very late. I hope you'll enjoy it anyway.
> 
> Also, when the first Avengers movie came out, I hoped that they would go with the Ultimate Hawkeye backstory, the whole family thing (except for the whole tragedy thing of course.) That said, I adore Laura Barton and the mini-Bartons, and will accept no bad words about them.

Sokovia goes up in flame and Clint barely notices. He sprawls on a bench in the lifeboat, unable to take his eyes off of the lifeless body on the floor. Someone should close the kid’s eyes. _He_ should close the kid’s eyes. He should get off his ass and see if the refugees need any help. He should…

The next time he drags his heavy eyelids open, the lifeboat is empty and silent. Even Pietro’s body has disappeared. Clint turns his head and discovers Cap crouched down beside him, a deep frown between his eyebrows.

“Barton, you all right?” 

That’s a complicated question. Clint doesn’t even know the answer. He’s bruised and battered, but not actively dying. He’s still alone in his own head, which is always a win. But ‘all right’? It’s a very broad term.

“The girl?” Clint finally asks. If she’s dead as well, after the speech he gave her... 

Cap’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder, large and warm and steady. “Wanda’s safe, the Vision got her out. Stark and Thor and Natasha are here too.”

That’s good, that’s… wait. Someone’s missing. That’s _not_ good.

“Banner?”

Steve looks away for long enough that Clint is beginning to worry and when the answer finally comes, it doesn’t do much to lessen the concern. “He hasn’t turned up yet. But it’s not like there’s anything that can actually _hurt_ him, not physically at least, so…” 

There’s something going on there, Clint can tell, even in his present dazed state. It’s probably got to do with whatever’s been going on between Bruce and Nat, and whatever it is, it can’t be good, not when it’s managed to put _that_ look on Steve’s face.

Steve sighs, runs a hand through his hair, and gets to his feet in a smooth unhindered motion that makes Clint’s gut churn with jealousy. If you didn’t know the guy’s spent the past few days fighting murder robots, you wouldn’t know it from looking at him. 

“We should get out of here,” Steve says. “You okay to walk?”

Clint closes his eyes again, takes stock. He’s not seriously hurt, he doesn’t think. Scrapes and bruises, a cracked rib or two. Possible concussion, muscles like jelly. Nothing that should keep him down. 

But. It’s been a long few days, and a lot of fighting in between the first trip to Sokovia and the second. Hell, that first hit he took during the Hydra raid should’ve benched him for _weeks_ , and even though Dr Cho fixed him up good as new, he’s still feeling the initial strain of the injury deep at his core. Coupled with the rest of the brutal tumbles and the general lack of sleep, it’s adding up.

Cap has the super soldier serum to help him along, Thor is the next best thing to a god, Bruce is pretty much indestructible. Stark is well protected inside his tin can and Nat is… well, Nat is _Nat_. Clint is just a guy with a bow and arrow and he’s not getting any younger. 

“Clint?” Steve prods, a hint of concern in his voice. 

Clint forces his eyes open again. “Might need a hand,” he has to confess. Steve’s frown deepens and Clint hurries to add. “I’m okay, just tired. Long day.”

“Long _week_ ,” Steve agrees. He wraps an arm around Clint’s shoulders to help him up, and Clint has to close his eyes again while the world spins around him. Yeah, he’s overdone it all right. Every limb is trembling with exhaustion and when he makes a move to stand, he finds that it’s just not possible. His legs refuse to hold his weight, even with Steve’s support. 

Clint takes the opportunity to use every curse in every language he knows. Then, just because he’s never learned to pass up a chance to be a dick, he tells Cap, “Sorry, didn’t mean to offend your sensitive ears.”

“I think you might need a little more than a hand,” Steve says, ignoring the quip. “Like immediate medical attention. Clint, you can’t even _stand_.”

“Nah, I’m good.” Clint flops back against the back of the bench,. At this point, it’s pretty much the only thing holding him up. He tries to cover it by waving his hand in a dismissive little motion that takes more out of him than he’d like to admit. “A nap and a snack and I’ll be good to go.”

Steve just raises an eyebrow that’s all Captain America. Clint is not about to argue with that eyebrow. That eyebrow could probably lead armies all on its own.

“Yeah, okay,” Clint agrees. “Medbay sounds about right.”

Steve nods, satisfied. “I’ll go get someone, stay here.”

“Not like I’ve got a choice!” Clint shouts at his retreating back. The only way he’s going to get anywhere is by crawling on his belly, and even that is debatable. 

Alone in the deserted lifeboat, he allows himself to slump a little more. Long week indeed. He sits and waits and stares at the drying bloodstains on the floor where Pietro’s body was lying just a little while ago. He fumbles with the zipper on his coat, manages to get it open just enough that he can slip a shaking hand into his inner pocket and grab the photo of Laura and the kids that he’s kept next to his heart through the entire battle.

Clint could have died today. Pietro died to save his life. He doesn’t know what’s worse. 

* * *

The helicarrier medic takes one look at Clint, declares his superpower to be the complete inability to recognize his own physical limits, and then proceeds to pump him so full of painkillers and muscle relaxants that he’s going to be useless for a week. He knows that he should check on the team, but he decides to sleep instead, because it just seems like the easiest option.

When he wakes up, many hours later, Natasha is sitting next to his bed, curled up in a chair. She’s clearly been dozing there, but the moment Clint moves, she’s awake, studying him with that unreadable expression she gets sometimes, the one not even Clint can decipher.

Clint makes a cautious attempt to sit up against the headboard. It takes a lot more work than it should and leaves him a little out of breath. Bouncing back from shit like this was way easier fifteen years ago.

“So,” he says, when he’s at least halfway upright. “Genocidal AI bent on world destruction. What’s next?”

She doesn’t answer, just keeps looking at him like she’s forgotten how words work. She looks relatively unharmed, no more damaged than the rest of them. The look on her face though, that look is terrifying. She looks tired. Not tired like Clint is tired, the kind of tired that can be remedied with a few nights of proper sleep. No, this is the endless soul-deep exhaustion that Clint has only seen once. That time, it was through a rifle scope, while he was trying to decide whether he should pull the trigger or not. It’s a look he’s been hoping to never have to see again in his life.

“Nat?” he asks, trying to sit up a little straighter, despite the protests from every cell in his body. “What happened?”

She shifts in the chair, chews on her lip, pulls her legs up so her knees are almost hitting her chin. Somehow she’s managing to look very old and very young at the same time.

“Nat,” Clint repeats. “Talk to me.”

“Bruce left.”

Her voice is flat, completely devoid of all emotion. It’s not fooling Clint though, and he wants to beat himself up for not noticing earlier what was going on between the two of them. He should change his damn code name for failing to see the things that’s apparently been going on right under his nose. 

“For good?” he asks.

She shrugs. “He took the quinjet in stealth mode. He’s wanted to leave since… you know. He asked me to come with him. I kissed him and then I pushed him down a hole because we needed the Hulk.”

People who don’t know Natasha as well as Clint does often make the mistake of thinking that she’s unbreakable. They couldn’t be more wrong. She’s just better than most people at hiding the cracks.

“You didn’t have a choice,” Clint says, and immediately regrets it. 

Nat just _looks_ at him. “I betrayed him.”

There’s enough space between them that Clint can’t reach for her. He suspects she positioned her chair in that exact spot for a reason.

“Hey,” he says, letting his hand dangle in her general direction. “Remember how hard it was for me to go home again, after Loki? Took me ages before I could trust myself around the kids. But I got better. Maybe he just needs some time.”

She gives him another one of those wounded looks. Clint wishes he had something more to offer than meaningless platitudes. But Natasha hates being lied to, even when it’s supposed to make her feel better.

Clint knows what it’s like to wake up to destruction wrought by your own hands. Bruce can’t be blamed for the things the Hulk does any more than Clint can be blamed for what he did under Loki’s influence. Doesn’t stop Clint from blaming himself, even after all the time that’s passed, after all the countless hours in various shrinks’ offices. And, well. Clint can be dangerous, sure, but he’s still just a guy with a bow and arrow. The damage he can do is _nothing_ compared to the Hulk.

How do you return from something like that? Clint had to dig his heels in and fight with teeth and claws to get his life back. He can’t even imagine what it has to be like for Bruce. What it has to be like for Nat to have been forced to add to that burden. 

“Have you slept?” he asks her. “I mean properly, in a bed.”

Nat shakes her head no. “We’ve got traumatized Sokovians everywhere. There aren’t any beds to spare.”

Well, that makes sense. So the traumatized ex-spies are just going to have to share. Clint moves aside and pulls the blanket down a bit to free up some space for her. 

“Come, get some rest.”

Natasha looks decidedly unimpressed. “There’s barely room enough for _you_ in that thing.”

“We’ve slept in worse,” Clint says. He inches as close to the edge as he can without falling out of the bed and pats the free spot on the mattress. “C’mere, lie down.”

She hesitates at first, but grief and exhaustion clearly wins out. She removes her boots, gets in next to him, squirms around a little to get comfortable. She usually smells like lavender, but today she only smells like smoke and pain and death, and Clint hates it. He wraps an arm around her waist and rests his chin on top of her head anyway. They’ve both smelled like worse. 

“Stark’s leaving,” Nat mumbles against his skin once they’re settled together in the narrow bed. 

“Yeah? He tell you that?”

“I can see it in his face. He’s done.”

Not surprising. Clint is pretty sure that Stark’s been done with this since New York. There’s only so much a guy can take, doesn’t matter if he’s a genius or not.

“I think I’m leaving too,” he has to admit. Today (yesterday? Clint lost track some time ago) hammered in some hard truths. Pietro died saving his life. He was so close to dying, to leaving Laura and the kids. He’s already missed too much. He wants to see his youngest come into the world. Wants to be there for his son’s first steps, his first words, his first tooth. It’s been too long since he’s been home for real. The whole Avenger thing wasn’t supposed to last anyway. It was only supposed to be about the sceptre, about finishing what they started. 

“I figured,” Nat breathes. There’s no judgement in the words, just weary resignation. 

Clint has had a lot of bad turns in his life, but Laura is one of the best things that’s ever happened to him. Sometimes, he can’t believe his luck, having her. There are plenty of women who would never approve of his friendship with Nat, who would be jealous for all the wrong reasons. 

Laura though, Laura gets it. She was the one who insisted that he bring Nat home to stay in their guest room after Clint decided not to take that shot. She was the one who insisted that the kids call her ‘Auntie Nat’, even when Natasha herself thought she didn’t deserve the honorific. Laura was the one who was able to look past the Black Widow, the monster who consumes her mates, and see the troubled and wounded woman behind the code name. 

Clint gets to have both his wife and his best friend, and he doesn’t know what he’d do if he lost either of them. 

“Come back with me,” he mutters against the skin of her neck. “Come stay with us, just for a while. The kids would be ecstatic.”

Natasha draws in a deep breath, holds it for a moment, but it doesn’t help. Before Clint can even reflect on what the hell he just said and why he should just keep his stupid mouth shut, she’s crying, the sobs almost silent, but no less heartbreaking.

There’s nothing he can say, just hold her close, brace her against the storm of grief and loss, and once again wish that there was at least a remnant of the Red Room left for him to raze to the ground. 

* * *

Coming home is like a deep breath of fresh air after a lifetime of smoke and exhaust fumes. The moment he steps through the front door, something in his heart settles. This is right. This is where he belongs.

He finishes up the flooring and makes it almost four days before he starts eyeing that dining room wall. It’s probably the carny in him, that need to stay in motion, get onto the next thing. He knows Laura doesn’t mind his endless home renovation projects, not really. Not as long as it’s just the house he keeps changing around. 

There are still nights when he has to go sleep on the couch because of the nightmares, because he’s terrified that he’ll wake up and find that he’s killed them all. There are days when he feels like a right shit for everything Laura’s had to go through for him. She takes care of the kids and the property while he’s gallivanting around the world making enemies.

He still wakes up in the mornings. Sits in front of the tv and watches cartoons with the kids, the little pieces of himself he’d never thought he’d ever have to offer up to the future. He watches Laura’s belly grow, wondering who the person in there might be. He wrestles with the tractor in the shed, thinking now and then that maybe he ought to give Stark a call, ask him for help. In the end, he decides to leave the guy alone with his demons, just as Clint is alone with his own.

He talks to Nat on the phone, on Skype, alone, and with Laura. Some days, it’s almost as that wounded look is gone, other days, it’s there in full force, and Clint has no idea what to do about it. Nat carried him through the aftermath of Manhattan, shored him up until he felt stable enough to go home again, to be a father and a husband. There are still days when he doubts himself, but they’re fewer now. He doesn’t sleep on the couch as often. He wakes up in the morning, curled around his wife, his palm feeling that new little life kicking inside her.

He wishes he knew how to do the same for Nat. He wishes she would let him.

He watches the news every day, hoping for a short clip of the Avengers, and at the same time, hoping they won’t be needed. There are days when he spots Captain America. There are days when the Falcon or War Machine or the Vision sweep across his TV screen. There are days when he sees Wanda, growing up and coming into her own before his eyes. There are days when he catches sight of Nat, always keeping to the background, always watching the backs of the rest of her team, the way she used to watch Clint’s. 

There are days when he yearns to be there, with them. By Nat’s side. Arguing with Cap. Showing Wanda the ropes. Figuring out the Vision. Get to know Sam Wilson and Colonel Rhodes for real. Then he sees his family out of the corner of his eye. His kids, his wife, the life he’d never thought he’d have.

“I’m just a guy with a bow and arrow,” he mutters into Laura’s hair. “I’m so far out of my league it’s not even funny.”

Laura wraps her arm around his waist, makes herself comfortable against his side. “That’s not what they need you for,” she says, and Clint knows she’s right.

Sooner or later, he will be back out there. Not today, not tomorrow, but some day. He’s just a guy with a bow and arrow, but he knows where he belongs. Here, with Laura and the kids. Out there, by Nat’s side. Maybe some day, he’ll be able to figure it all out. how to split himself between those two identities. Until then, he’ll just have to settle for one day at a time.

fin -


End file.
